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Renovating Britain after World War II
In the early 1960’s, my suburban Chicago 5th grade (very progressive!) male teacher was exchanged with a male teacher from suburban London UK, who taught me in the 6th grade. The exchange included their families, with my older brother becoming good friends with the British teacher’s eldest son. I heard many stories about life in England, including men having one good wool suit worn each day to work, unlike my father who had many suits. Their car engine was so small that it seldom went faster than 30 MPH. The British son was amazed while going down a country hill with the engine struggling to get to 45 MPH. At that time in America, most highway traffic was about 65 MPH, and even Germany rebuilt and significantly added to the unlimited speed Autobahn in the 1950’s.
So why was Britain so slow in renovating after the war, compared to the devastation in Germany and Japan? Some say that the 1948 Marshall Plan helped the other countries, but Britain received the most (26%) aid, followed by France (18%) and West Germany (11%). Most British industry was intact, with major destruction centered on housing around London, due to the night aerial bombing and V1 / V2 weapons near the war’s end. Rebuilding housing is not trivial, but simpler than most other infrastructure. But the key reason occurred in July 1945, even before World War II was over.
Winston Churchill, voted the Greatest Briton of all time, decided to hold a general election in 1945. During the war, the major parties (Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal) had a coalition government. Churchill was an enormously popular war leader, but the people wanted change – a “peace dividend.” The Labour party’s slogan was “Socialist and proud of it,” depicting Capitalism as evil. Labour won nearly twice as many seats (393) as the Conservatives (197), selecting Clement Attlee as the new Prime Minister. Labour’s plans included nationalizing major industries (mining, power, transport, iron and steel) along with the Bank of England. King George VI offered Churchill the Order of the Garter, to which he commented “Why should I accept from my sovereign the Order of the Garter when his subjects have just given me the Order of the Boot?
Along with America and Canada having intact post-war manufacturing facilities, Britain was still a major world producer of ships and the leading European producer of coal, steel, cars and textiles. British scientists developed key technologies, including the cavity magnetron for Radar and jet engines, with the famous General Electric J47 developed from the Frank Whittle design. Britain produced the first passenger Jet (Comet) and even Rolls Royce still produces jet engines today. Labour policies started the British “Brain Drain” of the 1950-1960’s, and even today Britain continues to lose 10% of its educated workforce, being replaced by “low skilled migrants”
As previously discussed, post-war housing was a major problem. During the war, the Greater London Pla
n (1944) was a blueprint for reconstruction and relocating Londoners and their jobs to new towns around the capital and other parts of England. Before the war, many lived in housing without running water. Labour prolonged the problem by tearing down slum housing while building urban council flats. The New Towns Act (1946) gave rise to eight towns outside the metropolis. The Town and Country planning Acts (1947, 1968) gave authorities control over land purchase and development in London. Even bombed out areas of London were not developed until after the 1960’s, unlike with Germany and France.
Besides the housing debacle of post-war Britain, the Labour party greatly reduced British living standards by continuing war-time rationing. Before the war, the British were better off than the Continent. Rationing continued into the early 1950s, ending around Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 Coronation. People continued to plant food in small gardens and allotments established during the war. Britain did not starve, but tasty items (sugar, milk/butter, eggs, and meat) were hard to get. Tea and coal were still being rationed in 1950. Even clothing was also rationed, giving Princess Elizabeth trouble with her 1947 Wedding Dress! Rationing became a continuation of the wartime ‘make-do-and-mend’ culture. *
As suggested by Ricochet member @seawriter in a comment, renovation of Britain didn’t occur until 1979 with Margret Thatcher. Even with Lady Thatcher’s reforms, it is less prosperous than Germany and about equal to Japan. The post war British experience with Socialism should be a warning to all who are seduced by its charm.
* The austerity and bureaucracy of the British post-war culture permeates George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Nevil Shute novels, and Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil.
Published in Group Writing
The evidence is all around us, yet the leftists always find other things to blame. In the case of Venezuela, “It’s American policies!”
And yet, past history is never enough warning for true believers. “We’ll do it better!”
Nice post Vectorman. I’ve never understood why the British people continued to put up with large scale rationing long after the war was over.
Why did Churchill call an election? As this a political gambit or was it a schedule election?
So having just fought the Socialist Nazis, what was it the British though would be different with Socialism? Were they blaming the ruling parties for the war? It must have been something in particular. What did Briton do with the Marshall Plan money?
The previous election was in 1935, so 10 years had past. His closest advisors told him to wait a few more years to implement a non-war conservative government without Labour and Liberal interference.
Socialism was popular among the educated elite and the working class. As shown in Dowton Abbey, the aristocrats were losing their hold over the people after WWI. Nature abhors a vacuum, thus Socialism.
Check out a more detailed discussion on Wiki article Marshall Plan.
Not such a hardship in the UK. My stint in boarding school in the 1960s showed me that frequent bathing, overly assiduous attention to personal hygiene, and paying too much attention to what one was wearing were steps on the road to destruction.
Made me laugh. And reminded me of Granny in her 1947 Rover, stopped by a policeman on the way to Cornwall for our summer holiday one year (I was in the car). Policeman: “I’m sorry, Madam, but you were doing 38MPH in a 30MPH zone.” Granny: Good heavens, Officer, I didn’t think the old girl could manage that speed.” Policeman: “Would you like me to issue you a written certificate saying that she will, in case you decide to sell her?”
Utter and absolute exhaustion, is my suspicion. As articulated by Auntie Pat (95 and may she live forever):
Yes. And for that, I blame what George Orwell called the “masochism of the English Left.”
Totally agree. And why I can’t bear to live there any more.
Will take a look at the last one. Orwell and Shute, for sure.
In the late 1950s my sister was in college with a Brit. Every time he went home to England he took a suitcase of stuff that we took for granted here. My parents chipped in to help him afford the stuff.
As one who lived in Paris and conducted business in the Midlands and London twenty years ago, I can say it was a shocking place in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. Entire British industries were so antiquated – metal bashing, chemicals, what was left of textiles, and electronics (if you can call it that). If you walked through a British plant, and then a new Japanese plant, it was 1940 versus 2020. In the British plant, three guys would be struggling to put a tire on; in the Japanese plant, wheel, tire, nuts and hubcap were installed by robots (zip, buzz, whoosh). Truth be known, Germany (Mercedes, BMW, VW, Porsche), France and Italy suffered from much of the same in 1990 (and quality problems to boot). But in Britain is was depressing – almost third world. The exclamation, “It’s a Rover!” never passed lips.
Britain lost many of their best and brightest in WWI and WWII. As a nation, they were exhausted. But this is a society deep in intellect and accomplishment. Their weariness did appear in the 1920’s and 30’s with the defectors, moles, and general laxity towards communism and socialism. The 1945 election is not surprising in that context.
One thing I noticed is this: they lost was their pride in their work. Maybe they just could not sustain? Management and labor alike cooperated in a kind of “I’ll give you this benefit” and if I do, “the Board of Directors will have to give me that too.” So special goodies were handed out as labor negotiated for more rules, special dispensations and less and less work. I would notice the shoes of managers – scuffed, unpolished and often with holes in the soles. They owned one pair of dress shoes, and seemed content. They thought of Americans as being ostentatious.
The health care system is laughably the funniest thing that Britains are tempted to brag about (not anyone with knowledge or anyone who has had cancer in Britain of course). During the last London Summer Olympics they did a skit where NHS nurses pushed beds around on the “pitch” to songs and dancing as the actor Kenneth Branagh dressed as John Bull looked on in amazement. They were celebrating Britain’s achievements – and some how NHS (along with the internet – apparently the British have never heard of Al Gore!) were innovations of Britain. It was shortly thereafter that the number of patients with serious conditions confined to hospital beds sitting in open hallways began to leak out. There simply were not enough hospital rooms to hold the patients. They also have a fair bit of “death panel” rules and priorities.
When you hire a British A or B level manager. the first thing they ask for is a car. The second thing is private healthcare coverage. Hmm? Maybe things are not as good as they say? Well, Kenneth Branagh goes to Switzerland or New York for health care. No dancing bed for him.
I’m laughing so hard here.
Interesting post.
How did that prolong the problem?
I’m betting it might be the fault of American urban planners who were active at that time and responsible for some of the worst apartment complex disasters of all time. The Department of Housing and Urban Development went into building these massive multistory apartment “cities” in a big way. Some of them became so crime ridden that the cities had to tear them down completely. (For a good example, see the Watuppa Heights story here and here. Built in the 1950s, and it was finally torn down 2013. Another example is the Columbia Point project in Dorchester, south of Boston,) They had unlit stairwells and parking lots, no 24-hour security systems, and no mix of people. They filled them with people who had developed very bad housekeeping habits from their years in true slums. The government saw a lot of poor people in need of housing, and they built the ugliest Communist-architecture buildings they could think of and jammed every poor dysfunctional person they could find into them. It was the worst example of “they are poor and don’t deserve better” thinking that was popular at that time.
Am I right? Was it the same thinking in England at that time? Was it our fault in terms of our bad influence? :-)
Thanks for your replies, and your observation about hygiene. The British teacher worked at an equivalent US public school, not the British equivalent “public school” like your boarding school, which was really private.
I wanted to include other information about my 5th grade progressive US teacher, who didn’t care much during class discussion about right and wrong answers, but rewarded “creativity,” much like modern methods. The British teacher, who flew a Lancaster bomber in WWII, was soft spoken but highly competent at teaching. He fixed many of my problems from the US teacher.
If my mother had had anything to do with it, the suitcase would have been full of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.
[EDIT: IFIFM. I am a blockhead with block quotes sometimes.]
Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” explains this phenomenon, based on contemporary records. You are making an assumption about the British intellectual class’s view of Nazi economic policy which seems intuitively obvious (after all, the Nazis were Britain’s enemy, right?), but which is pretty much the opposite of what history shows to be true.
They were already several years behind the 5 year normal term because of the war. I assume Churchill also thought he would win handily.
I don’t think the British thought of the Nazis as socialists. Moreover, at the time of the election the Soviet Union was still an ally.
Churchill also made a unusual rhetorical mistake during the campaign which caused a backlash, calling the Labour Party “a kind of Gestapo”.
And maybe a lot of folks thought they deserved better after the years of sacrifice during the Depression and WW2.
As a side note the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin turned out to be an unexpectedly strong anti-communist. After WW2 he denounced Stalin more quickly than the Americans; supported the creation of NATO; when the Americans initially wavered, opposed abandoning Berlin when the Soviets began their blockade; and immediately proposed a military response to the North Korean invasion of the South.
Somewhere, I have a photo of the car. License plate GOV 141. Similar to the ones in this video:
Just the fact that Granny and Grandpa could afford such a car only a couple of years after the War was an indication of how “privileged” (TM) we were.
Suicide doors. The turn signals were mechanical, and flipped out, left and right between the front and back doors. Lovely wood finishings on the dashboard. Dark blue leather upholstery. I’ll never forget the smell, or the whirring, high-pitched sound as she went into reverse. Nor the crank, which was regularly employed to get her going.
PJ O’Rourke wrote in Parliament of Whores about visiting a public housing project in (New Jersey?). He said something to the effect that in his travels around the world he’d seen people living in terrible conditions, including living in an actual burning garbage dump, but there was no place that he would less rather live than in that housing project.
A crank for a 1947? Okey-dokey then.
Most of the US housing immediately after the war was in Levittown small single family suburban homes, not in Urban Renewal,which became more popular after the Housing Act of 1954.
I grew up in a Levittown-type planned community. The 6th grade British Teacher lived in the oldest construction (~1948) townhome, similar to the picture above.
Yepper. Not the only hand-cranked car I remember, either.
“Socialists” is exactly what the British intellectual class thought the Nazis were. Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” covers this period of British intellectual thought very well. The intellectuals whose ideology reigned supreme in post-war Britain greatly admired Nazi economic policy, were grateful that the war had given Britain an opportunity to put that policy into effect more quickly than the Fabianists had prior to the war, and didn’t think it went far enough even in the wartime emergency economy: State control of the means of production, if it only meant capital, was not a self-consistent policy. Direct State ownership of labor was also necessary for socialism to succeed.
Well, what they found that when you tear down the complex and disperse the residents with Section 8 vouchers is that you don’t eliminate the crime; you just spread it around.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/306872/
The buildings were not built to be delapidated warehouses for poor people; they were built to be improvements over the private slum houses that had existed before. Sure, there were undoubtedly corners cut and maintenance deferred, but the decay was mostly the result of the inhabitants, not the builders. People don’t care about what they don’t pay for:
https://reddit.app.link/YfDpxWAWIT
In fact, when Thatcher gave residents the ability to buy their public housing, many people took advantage of the opportunity and many are now quite valuable and well cared for.
It’s also important to remember that Churchill was a supporter of the welfare state. In his recent biography, Andrew Roberts points this out in Churchill’s response to the Beveridge report of 1942:
I think you are misreading the question that prompted my comment and therefore the nature of my response. It was not about the intellectuals but rather the electorate that supported the Labour Party in 1945. I think it a mistake to assume those supporting Labor did so because they admired Nazi economic policy.
In the late 1980’s, our very small electronics company had a visit from our British Sales Representative. He noticed one piece of British test equipment which cost $10,000. He remarked that in England it would be over 10,000 British pounds, or about $20,000 equivalent. He then asked about Engineering salaries, with ours more than double that of Britain, implying that our standard of living would be close to a 4:1 advantage. Of course, the Value Added Tax would be refunded on the equipment exported to the US, but the US standard of living was still more than 2:1.
The equipment worked fine and was the best value on the market.
There’s also the small matter of losing a very large captive market with the end of the empire.
Back in 2017 I wrote this* about Britain’s government induced shortages in a long QOTD. It covers some of the same ground Vectorman does, albeit from the perspective of fiction.
Neville Shute’s final novel, Trustee from the Toolroom also touched on Britain’s brain drain, including causes and effects.
* I would have cut-and-pasted the entire quote, but it exceeds my 500-word comment limit.
I was trying to think of what he took back when I made that comment and the first thing that came to mind was chocolate and canned meats. BTW my sister went to Duquesne .
Levittown was a great idea. It has truly flourished over the years.
Liberal Party Churchill was very involved in the establishment of social welfare programs before WW1. This was in part an inclination he inherited from his father. Lord Randolph Churchill was a key mover in the development of Tory Democracy, an attempt to broaden the base of the Tory party by addressing social problems affecting the average Briton. The Liberals were the original party of reform exemplifying an upper middle class desire to “do good”.